The more we carry on with this debate by responding knee-jerkingly
at every quote of ours, the more we develop multiple and ridiculously
long posts. I will sift through the main points in the latest posts and
try to summarize.
MONOVOCALISM
------------
> I have been driven to declare repeatedly and consistently that I do
> not advocate a monovocalic system for the final phase of PIE, [...]
One way or another you must choose. Without focusing on one opinion at
a time, one never allows oneself to uncover any falsehoods in it. That
leads to stagnation.
If the above is indeed your position while still obsessing on IE's
apparent monovocalism, then you must surely also believe as you later
entertain that the single vowel may be "only apparent, and that it was
in reality more than one phoneme in an old period before the advent of
*a and *o from secondary sources."
If that was what was behind your nebulous stance, I then agree but I
had even stated the above previously and was met with opposition! So
I remain confused on what stance if any you are maintaining. I suppose
it's a clever debating tactic since I can no more nail you to a logical
error anymore than I can catch the wind in my hand. Since I purposely
stick to an idea and persist with it to the logical limit before adapting,
I will be seen no doubt as the one most prone to errors... something I
should ironically be proud of in this case.
THEMATIC VOWELS
---------------
First off, I can accept an alternation of *kWrto-/*kWrti but I can't
bring myself to include *kWrtu- in this. In my mind, it is *kWr-t-u-
with a morpheme *-u- seen in other situations such as with the n-infix
*-nu-. The n-infix is known both in isolation and combined with other
suffixes that occur in isolation such as with the transitive to form
*-nex-. This then can only mean that *-u- is a morpheme in its own
right, either in IE itself or in pre-IE. Further substantiation of *-u-
exists in words like *pek-u- "herd" (< *pek- 'to comb (as of wool)')
and probably *gWehW-u- "cow" (< *gWehW- 'to graze'). These are just
not related to thematic stems in *-o- or *-i- at all. If *ku-kleu-
is the proper reduplication of *kleu-, it still doesn't serve to show
that you're right. Rather it undermines your viewpoint because by this
demonstration you inadvertantly explain it away at the same time as
nothing more than the reiteration of the *u found in the root. So *u
therefore can't be any reflection of thematic vowel here, logically!
Also, it would be deluded to think that having the accent on the
thematic vowel explains "the adjectival function, expressed by the
thematic suffix, and the agreement of ablaut and accent" since we never
find **bHr-o- (which you try to patch up with ad hoc o-infixing) and so
we can't really insist on the last part of your quote. Quantitative
ablaut gives us nothing for the solution of this puzzle, no doubt because
the resultant forms we see follow the event of Syncope. That you rely on
this ablaut to steer you the way shows that there is a flaw in your
reasoning.
On another note, while *-to- is clearly the thematicized version of *-t-,
can we really say that *-no- is the thematic variant of syllabic *-n-
when we in fact find *-r instead? I don't think so. At any rate, this has
no bearing on accent since adjectives insist on final accentuation, and
if my genitive explanation doesn't cut it for you, these are still the
facts. Naturally forms in *-no- and *-to-, being adjectives anyway, would
have no choice but to follow suit and conform to the accent pattern seen
in other adjectives. This still doesn't explain the source of the pattern
if genitives are not the culprit. Also, I'm aware of exceptions where a
thematic noun may have final accentuation but this is the exception to
the overall rule we are discussing. It's irrelevant in regards to the
relationship of *deiwo- and *dyeu-, the latter containing original accent,
the former doing away with it in one way or another.
You've merely asserted once more without substantiation that *bHór-o-
and *bHor-ó- can only originate from the finally accentuated form and
that o-infixing, by our majesty's decree, is the solution. No, it is
a _possible_ solution that apparently still cannot be proven by you.
I've already shown in multiple ways how the adjectival case system is
not original in any way. I've shown the clearcut relationship of animate
*-s and inanimate *-m with genitival nouns in animate *-o-s (the
garden-variety thematic) & in inanimate *-o-m (like *yug-o-m, whose
loss of *m in the dative form *yug-o-i can only be **CASE ENDING
MISANALYSIS** of *m as the accusative), not to mention the unavoidable
observation that the adjectival case suffixes are precisely those of the
nominal case system. How do you miss all that? And yet, you will say that
adjectives hold the archaicism. This is where your position is completely
mad. There is nothing terribly archaic about IE's adjectives.
SUBJUNCTIVE
-----------
As I originally stated, the thematic vowel must be seperated from the
subjunctive in *-he-. It would be absurd to add *h just anywhere
without limit. Thematic vowels have no semantic value, the end. However
the subjunctive, if *-he-, most certainly does have a specific value.
So while the meaningless thematic is nothing more than a vowel, the
subjunctive is actually a analysable _morpheme_ with a CV structure.
I use *h here to explain the subjunctive forms for what they really
are, not as a seemingly random lengthening of thematic vowel that you
fail to explain, but as the merger of two vowels seperated by the *h of
the subjunctive morpheme. In that way, the unexplained "lengthening" is
addressed as a trivial addition of a distinct affix in these forms.
Without adding *h, you cannot properly explain why a subjunctive
*bHere:t should alternate with indicative *bHereti. Well, I've already
stated the only sensible solution that explains the attested form
completely: *bHer-e-he-t.
Further, we can see the etymology clearly now in the form which you
concede is "not impossible", the closest to an agreement you can ever
muster.
THEMATIC VERBS IN ALL ASPECTS?
------------------------------
You state that the reduplicated present of *bHer- is irrefutably
athematic. Whoopsy, you got me. So it is *bHibHérti then and so
Acrostatic Regularization has no bearing here as I had said.
But...
We still have an accent on the _second_ syllable here. QAR is saying
that a syllable was lost... the thematic vowel. However, if it was
lost by Syncope, that vowel must be MIE *a. So, the only way to explain
why we have an athematic stem here is to conclude that these reduplicated
stems were once aorist like the other athematic stems that I've also
concluded were once aorist in order to explain the same lack of vowel.
That works semantically when I come to think about it since aorists
are afterall "actions as a whole". Repetitive actions are also actions
spoken of as a whole. So that means the more proper MIE iterative stem,
being now aorist, would have to be *be-bera-, not **be-bere- which would
have yielded my erroneous **bHíbHereti if only it were true.
Thanks, Jens, you led me back on track there. That would suggest that
the typical form of an aorist stem in MIE was simply CeC-a- or
reduplicated Ce-CeC-a-. That works. Another example of an aorist would
be 1ps *t:ehWa-m 'I give' also conforming that that pattern (hence
*dehWm "I give").
= gLeN